“What?” Neil asked turning around to look in the direction the lead scientist was facing. “Don’t try and get out of this, man.” Neil no longer knew if he could still trust the people he had spent the most of adult life with or not.
Jack raised an arm; a trembling limb that shook with more than age or nerves. “Him…that zombie there, he…I um…he should be dead.” The words were stuttered and varied in pitch as if the older man had hit a second round of puberty.
Neil studied the crowd, and saw nothing but the undead, their bloody bodies twisted and broken, yet somehow still moving forward. They no longer stood gathered in one spot, but circled the glass, like animals. They could sense the fear in the air, and knew that it would only be a matter of time.
“It is as if they are looking for a weak point,” Neil mused aloud, unaware that he had done so until Jack answered him.
“Don’t be stupid, they are brainless monsters. All of them,” Jack said. His voice had regained a level of composure, but it was not the same collected speech of the rational man he had been a few moments before.
“Yeah, well,” Neil spat, giving Jack the evil eye. “Even the walls of Jericho fell eventually, and I don’t think there is a God here still willing to save this place.”
Jack said nothing. He didn’t even hear the remark. His attention was held by the tall, gangly body of the young scientist he had injected with his most recent strain of a potential cure. He had been returning from his quest for a suitable candidate when he had happened across Neil.
“Hey, is it me, or does that zombie seem to have more of a purpose to it than the others?” Neil asked after having followed Jack’s gaze for a time.
“You saw that too, huh?” the scientist turned and grabbed his notebook. He began to scribble frantically, talking to himself as he wrote.
“Yeah, I saw it, Jack, but you did first. You know what is going on. I told you I wanted to know what was going on. Don’t keep lying to me, Jack.” The name was expelled with a venomous barb attached.
“I found him just before I found you. He was alone in one of the hallways, and I injected him with a cure I had been working on. It was strain number 13. He had the same reaction as the rest: seizures, bleeding, and death… again.”
“Well, he looks pretty alive to me, or well, undead.” Neil paused to consider that correct wording. While he pondered, the zombie walked to the main entrance of the lab and reached for the handle. Its movements were uncoordinated, yet effective, for after a few moments it held the cold metal handle in both hands and had started to jiggle the doors this way and that.
“What the hell?” Neil asked, watching the scene unfold with no thought to the implications of such a change. “You cured it.” He looked over at Jack, expecting to find a relieved figure. Instead, he saw a ghost. A figure so pale he could have passed for one of the dead. “What’s wrong? You said it yourself, you gave him the cure. Maybe he just needs a bigger dosage or something like that,” Neil offered his opinion.
Jack said nothing, but stood in stunned silence as slowly the outer doors began to open. He moved quickly, opening a cupboard he pulled out a lockbox. With fear fuelled fingers he struggled to enter the key code, but on the fourth attempt, he heard a faint click, and wrenched the box open. Inside was a fully loaded pistol; nothing fancy, but enough to stop even that hardiest of human beings.
“What’s wrong? I thought they couldn’t get through?” Neil asked, amazed at how quickly even he had been comforted by the concept of safety.
“The outer walls no, but none of them have ever tried the fucking door before,” Jack’s answer was absurd.
“You never locked the door?” Neil found it beyond comical.
“No, this place is secured from the outside in. This lab is designed to keep bacteria inside should something happen, not keep people out.”
“Okay, that’s fine. So what is the plan? Where is your escape route?” Neil asked, falling back on his army training, which had always taught him to have a secondary way out of any situation he may be in.
“There isn’t one. Not here anyway. The lab is sealed; one way in, one way out,” Jack answered as he slammed the magazine into place and flicked the safety off. He grabbed five boxes of ammunition, and put them into his lab coat’s two side pockets.
“What if we let him in?” Neil answered, spitting the idea out. It left a sour taste in his mouth to just suggest it.
“What do you…?” Jack began, but stopped when he realized what Neil meant. “The others will never get the door open. If we can separate him from the rest…that might just work. But who is going to go let him in?” he asked, with a tone that was more hinting that really questioning.
“I’ll do it, but if you get the chance, take the shot.” Neil handed the scientist the rifle. “Use this,” he said as he released his grip on the rifle, and grabbed the knife, in addition to the forty-five automatic handgun.
The reanimated body of a soldier formerly known as Philip Gentry met Neil at the inner door. He had five deep gouges running down once side of his face, and a large hole in his neck. He growled and groaned, becoming more agitated, the closer Neil got. Behind him, the outer doors were still open. With the power out, and the lab running on a subterranean generator, all unnecessary electrical equipment had been disabled, including the doors.
“Great,” Neil whispered under his breath.
“What is it?” Jack asked, having seen the drop in Neil’s shoulders more than he heard the sigh and whispered words.
“The outer door is still open. I’ll close it quickly once we have taken care of this guy,” Neil answered, sure that his response was the same order Jack was about to give him.
“No,” Jack bellowed, a deep, booming roar of emotion. “Don’t open the door,” he began, but it was too late.
Neil had released the internally operated pressure valve that held the door closed. The glass doors – already cracked from the zombies blows, slid apart and the undead corpse of Philip Gentry lunged into the lab.
The thing that struck Neil first, even before the clubbing blow from the once young soldier, was the smell. The entire facility stunk of death, and when the seal was broken, the heady aromas of decaying meat and spilled blood flooded into the small space. Neil couldn’t help but gag; the wall of odor was so intense.
“Neil, move!” Jack called from behind him, although to Neil, he could have been on the other side of the complex. He saw and heard nothing but the zombie before him, and the hammering of his own heart. A shot rang out, but it sounded no worse than the release of the vacuum when opening a jar for the first time. Philip Gentry’s head exploded as the rifle round tore through his softened skin and bone. The bullet passed through his skull and through the open doorway before hitting the concrete wall with an echoing ting that caught the attention of every zombie that had surrounded them so patiently.
“Christ, Neil, move…you need to move,” Jack called, but once again, Neil heard a distant whisper. He watch as the body remained standing for a moment, as if deciding whether or not this death would be the final one. A thick blood oozed from the meaty mess that had once been its head. It bubbled to the surface; its viscosity not comparable to the blood Neil felt coursing through his veins at the moment.
It didn’t take long - thirty seconds at the most - for the first zombie to find the opening in the lab’s defenses and force their way through.
“No, Neil. You need to hold them off. Kill them all. The cure, I’ve almost found it. We need to save the lab,” Jack called as he fired another round into the head of the next zombie. The weight of the crowd behind it pushed the body forward, in a fashion not dissimilar to the way riot police storm a building, with their long shields held before them.
Jack fired a burst of gunfire into the crowd, and while every bullet tore through the flesh it came into the contact with, his nervous hands caused his aim to lessen, and so he did nothing more than add an extra wound or two to their approaching bodies.
While not quick creatures, the way they moved with such unfaltering fearlessness served as an equally overwhelming ability. Their numbers seemed much thicker than they were, and soon the lab was filled with the zombies. Neil emptied the clip of handgun as he retreated deeper into the lab. His shots echoed around the enclosed space, and when he turned around, having run out of room to retreat into, he saw that he had dropped three of them. Another sported a gaping hole in the center of its throat, where a wayward bullet had torn the flesh apart, burrowing a channel through and out the back of the zombies throat.
“Jack, Jack, help!” Neil yelled as the zombies continued to close in on him.
“I can’t, the fucking thing is jammed!” Jack screamed his answer, with the same frantic voice of a man who was on the cusp of his own existence.
Neil looked, but couldn’t see the scientist. He was hidden behind a wall of the undead. An undead hand clamped on Neil’s shoulder. He looked to his right and saw a face, void of flesh, a red meaty mass with a chomping center, leaning in for a taste of his flesh. Neil struck out, punching the zombie straight on. The blow was a forceful one, and snapped the head of the creature backward, but it did little more than buy Neil a few moments.
Panicked, and out of ammo, for Jack still held the spare magazines, Neil dropped the handgun as he remembered the hunting knife he had in his belt. With a lunging stabbing motion, Neil slid the knife, with a sickening ease, through the face of the zombie, which had regained its footing and moved in for a second attempt. It gave a gargle, which Neil thought had a tone of surprise to it, and then fell still. It fell to the floor, sliding from the knife with a wet, sucking sound. The blade was covered in thick black blood, but there was no time to examine anything, for with one zombie felled, two more appeared to take its place.
Neil slashed and stabbed with wild abandon, and before long he had slain six of the crowd that filled the lab. Turning, he made his way toward Jack, who had barricaded himself behind a stainless steel gurney. The gurney was one of several in the lab, and they had restraints in each corner; almost as if they had been designed to hold a human being in an exposed and vulnerable position. Neil put the image out of his mind. He would ask later, but only if they both survived. With their backs to him, Neil made quick work of four zombies, before his presence was smelled. The remaining seven creatures turned, their dead eyes like cold spotlights, chilling the air around whatever it was that fell under their gaze. Neil felt his skin shrink, but through the gap, he saw Jack, and in his arms he cradled several beakers filled with a milky liquid. It gave Neil a second wind, and retreating, drawing the creatures away from Jack, and the supposed cure, but also into an area that was less crowded with the dead – the unmoving kind. The zombies descended in one unit, yet, without any coherence and so each blocked the other more than they aided either. The confusion bought Neil time to strike out and slide his knife through the skulls of two zombies, and further reduce the numbers of the opposition.
“Neil, draw them out of the lab. Lose them in the tunnels,” Jack called out, distracting the savages, and thus enabling Neil to stab another three, one of which took several attempts. Weak from hunger and dehydration – it hadn’t dawned on Neil that he had still yet to drink anything since his rescue – his arm was wracked with cramping and refused to fully obey the commands of his brain. He stabbed the creature once in the shoulder, the blow being intended for the apex of the bald, egg shaped head that sat on the zombies shoulders. The second attempt had been more of a thrust, but found the mouth and not the brain.
“Come on, we need to move,” Neil wheezed. He was covered from head to toe in a foul smelling blood which could only be described as putrefaction. His vision blurred and his knees buckled, but he forced himself to remain standing.
“No, we need to stay, Neil. We need to fix this,” Jack started to protest, but the final two zombies had split, one bore down on Jack, while the other remained focused on Neil.
With his strength failing him, Neil was driven backward by the zombie, where they collided with the wall of the lab. Raising his arm, Neil slipped the knife beneath the creature’s chin, and held the salivating mouth away from his throat, while he fumbled with his grip on the knife in his other hand. Unable to reach the creature’s head, Neil sliced through the abdomen, cutting with furious abandon. He only stopped when he felt the cold mass of internal organs spilling onto the floor. Even that did nothing to stop the zombie’s hunger, but the sudden change in its center of gravity gave Neil the edge and he drove the knife through the creatures face, puncturing the eyeball and burying the blade to the hilt. The creature fell to the floor just as a scream rang out from across the lab. In a shower of glass and broken vials, Jack flew through the air, launched inadvertently by the zombie he was trying to avoid. The milky liquid splattered the floor, and cabinets, and for a moment, Neil thought he caught a faint orange scent wash through the room.
“No,” Jack cried as he scrambled to his feet, knocking over several stools in the process. The zombie was upon him soon after, its bare feet crushing the glass shards without second thought.
Neil jumped across the room. Adrenaline fueling his actions, he leapt with the knife raised above his head and stabbed downward, through the back of the creature’s neck. The spine snapped with an audible and brittle sounding crack. The creature – for Neil no longer associated any of the names his brain threw at him, with the creatures he saw – fell to the floor, the knife still protruding from its back. Reaching out, Neil grabbed the blade and watched in horror as the creature, whose arms and legs had been rendered useless, continued to snap at the ground, snarling like a cornered dog.
Neil watched fascinated by the creature and the change that had come over it. He took the knife, and paused, why would be the purpose of killing it? Surely it would die of its own accord. He withdrew, and turned away.
“I guess we don’t have any reason to stay now,” he spoke to Jack as he walked away.
Neil flinched when he heard the sound of the zombies head exploding as Jack stamped it to bloody pulp, roaring with savage triumph was globs of grey brain jelly splattered the floor. He did jump however, when he turned around after a hundred meters and saw that Jack had not left the lab. He had taken a seat, with his back to Neil, and leaned on a countertop, with his head in his hands.
“Jack, come on man. What are you waiting for?” Neil called. He was overly aware of the way his voice echoed through the passageway.
“No, I can’t leave,” Jack called back, his words muffled by his hands.
Neil stood, looked in all directions, and with a heavy sigh moved back toward the lab.
“Fuck the cure, man. I am not leaving you behind. You found the secret. Great. Tell that to the boys topside and they will give you everything you need. Do you really think this is the only facility like this?” Neil urged. He paused at the entrance to the lab.
“It’s not about the cure, Neil. Go, get to the top and seal it off.” Jack stood clumsily, knocking his stool to the floor. He turned around, his balance already failing.
“Jack, quit playing, there’s bound to be more of those things down here…” Neil’s words caught in his throat when he saw the blood. Jack was missing three fingers on his left hand. They had been bitten off just above the palm.
“Neil, leave, now!” Jack ordered. The power of his statement was clear even though the strength of his voice was failing him.
Even as Jack spoke, the color drained from his face. His eyes sunk and he found himself fighting a consuming rage that had developed within him. He saw Neil, he knew his name, but hardly recognized him.
Neil was saying something, but he couldn’t hear. The words were foreign to his ears, like static.
Neil reached out to grab the scientist, determined to pull him to safety. He had read plenty of zombie books
to know that sometimes, people were immune. As someone who had worked on the cure, Jack had surely been exposed to more than enough to help him fight it off.
Jack growled as Neil touched him, his head thrust forward, and his jaw clamped shut, nearly trapping its prize. Neil gave a surprised yell and pulled his arm away. Jack had narrowly missed his skin, instead biting into the sleeve of his shirt.
“Jack, come on, it’s me. You can beat this thing. Nobody else knows the cure. Otherwise, tell me – show me your notes.” Neil looked over the fresh zombie’s shoulder at the pile of notebooks and scribbled upon loose sheets of paper.
Jack lunged forward again, his stumbled steps creating an illusion of lost balance. Neil was forced to jump backward once more. He jumped into the glass refrigerator unit – which had already been knocked off balance by the previous wave of the undead – and he sent it crashing to the floor with a cacophonous crash that surely alerted any remaining zombies to his presence. Jack continued to move, and while Neil pushed him out of the way, the message was not received, and he strode forward once more.
Back pedaling, Neil knew what he had to do. With a drop of his shoulder, he threw his weight in one direction, pushed back again with the other foot, and with a second dip ducked underneath Zombie Jack’s outstretched arms. Neil planted his feet, twisted his body and forced the knife through the back of Jack’s skull. Having only just turned, the skin and bone had yet to soften, and so the blade refused to withdraw. Neil left it behind, quickly filling his arms with as many books and pieces of paper as he could find before running out of the lab and up to the surface.
He dropped three books as he ran, but refused to stop, for his mind made him believe that he was being followed. Neil burst from the underground facility, bolted from the barn and into the fields that surrounded them, knocking over three army personnel before finally losing his balance… and almost his head. The rifle that was fired adjusted its aim the same time the trigger was depressed and as a result the bullet merely clipped Neil’s shoulder.
Diaries of the Damned Page 27